Todd Gilchrist

With as skilled a filmmaker at the helm as Cucinelli is a designer and entrepreneur, one may not mind being swept along by its rhapsodic portrait, even if you quickly become convinced that “The Gracious Visionary” is too generous to be fully honest about its subject.

Story’s body of work is not unlike Hart’s, in that every pretty good movie he’s made is significantly outnumbered by bad ones. His latest falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum: It isn’t totally awful, but it strains to communicate how much fun the audience should be having instead of, well, just being fun.

The film is so astonishingly bad, it almost feels like the writer-director-producer is deliberately sabotaging his star Armie Hammer, whose intended comeback can only be harmed by this project.

More than their civilian counterparts, viewers familiar with “Drag Race,” its superstars and its lore will likely get much out of watching the cast trade on or tweak the personae for which they’re known on stage. But notwithstanding its queer-friendly lexicon (much of which has infiltrated social media anyway), Shankman’s film is an easily accessible, unexpectedly ingratiating experience.

Rather than stirring a debate, or even inspiring deeper cultural introspection, Sharrock and her collaborators deliver a trifle. For a satire about progress, “Ladies First” relies on far too many ideas from the past — cinematic even more than cultural.

A true rarity, Send Help feels fresh and unique — so much, in fact, it’s hard to decide whether you want Raimi (or anybody else, for that matter) to make more movies like it, or let it alone, thriving on a far-off island where no one can compromise its singular, idiosyncratic perfection.

Thanks to Liu as both performer and producer, Rosemead not only earns its place among those films’ superlative ranks, but achieves a surprisingly powerful balance between intimate cultural authenticity and urgent, universal relevance.

Thrilling and sumptuous, James Cameron’s latest chapter in this ongoing saga is probably the best one to date, with painstaking world-building, sweeping action and stunning imagery. It also feels too often like a remake of its predecessor, with characters, conflicts and plot developments that even the most devoted fans may find repetitive.

Ultimately, there are few filmmakers whose work I admire more for its sophistication and undeniable humanity than that of Brooks, but this film isn’t just bad — it’s unbearable.

What lingers after watching the film in its most complete form, however, is the fact that it’s so thoughtfully written, brilliantly constructed and (especially) beautifully acted. One imagines that breaking the film in two may have scuttled its chances of earning Uma Thurman a Best Actress nomination, but 20-plus years on, she deserves that recognition more than ever, conveying the character’s strength, resilience and determination, but also her incredible vulnerability.